I’m highly dubious about this. What exactly is it going to achieve?? It will change no one’s attitudes and, if anything, will make the people that perform these ridiculous songs seem like martyrs. By all means argue with them, picket their shows, speak out against them. Banning them is completely counter-productive and hysterical.

Peter Tatchell and his ilk have really unsettled me in all of this. They protest against blasphemy laws and ridicule (quite rightly) the proposed law banning incitement to religious hatred, shrieking about free speech. Then they set out to ban music which contains views they don’t like. How intelligent. It just displays the same self-absorbed ignorance that enables Tatchell to on the one hand claim that all he wants for gay people are the ‘human rights’ enjoyed by all and then on the other jump up and down demanding special ‘hate’ laws for gay people. I mean, what the hell is the point of a ‘hate’ law?! If someone stabs me because I am gay why is that somehow worse than them stabbing me because they want my wallet? They’re just both manifestations of the same root causes. I’m also getting incredibly sick of people resorting to arguments like, ‘well would you still support it if they were insulting black/Islamic people?’. It’s such a trite, bullshit argument that smacks of being the other side of the ‘why do all these coloured people get so bloody looked after?!’ Daily Mail coin. You’re not black, what you’re arguing about has nothing to do with being black, and if the only way you can think to argue is by lumping ‘gays’ and ‘blacks’ together as these facelessly generic minorities who need protecting from the nasty white straight folk, then you really should shut up and engage your brain before you speak.

Of course gay people still face a lot of discrimination and prejudice. Changing it takes time. It takes education and debate. It requires tackling the social and economic issues that enable ignorant attitudes to flourish. It does not require tokenistic sledgehammer laws and a hyper-sensitive carping that continually refers back to one’s own sexuality. Who is Peter Tatchell? He is a gay. And that’s just sad.

I’m not sure if I should be pleased that I came to this viewpoint so ‘early’, or depressed that I’m repeating myself.